Worlds first USV-supported cable route survey

The challenging route included varying water depths and strong currents, as well as the difficult wind and sea conditions off the Alaskan coast of the Bering Sea.

The project mobilised immediately after a 9,000km charting survey – 4,750km of which were achieved using an ASV Global C-Worker 5 autonomous surface vehicle (ASV). The cable route survey required a different payload including a hull-mounted multibeam sonar, sub-bottom profiler and a towed sidescan sonar with 250m of armoured cable. In less than 48 hours, the new payload was integrated, calibrated and verified before the C-Worker 5 completed 1,220km of survey lines. Throughout the operation, the ASV was remotely monitored with the ASView control system, which used survey lines exported from the planning software to conduct an accurate survey with minimal human intervention.

ASV Global and TerraSond have spent the last three years refining the use of autonomous systems in hydrographic applications. Together, they have now achieved the technology’s first use in charting and in the Arctic, as well as completing this cable route survey and the first combined 10,000km of unmanned survey lines.

By Helen Atkinson